According To Hoyt

Sorry to be ridiculously late posting this but after an early wake up to get #2 son to an event on this snowy morning, we got back in bed to stay warm.  I have been reading a stack of books on being young in England just before WWI — not sure where this is leading yet.  It’s one of those cravings.  Some glimmer of a mystery series, maybe, but when I don’t know since there are all sorts of popcorn kittens ahead of it.  We shall see.

Meanwhile, despite being cold I couldn’t stand being in bed anymore, and besides I have copyedits on Sword and Blood (under pen name Sarah Marques) to go over, I have Darkship Renegade to do a last pass to (I have a theory that now that I’m no longer depressed I can clean it up a bit — might be wrong, who knows?  But I had a sense of the voice being slightly askew on that one, I just couldn’t fix it.  We’ll see if I can now.  BTW this might be imagination, as I felt the same way about Darkship Thieves, but four years after writing it reads fine.) and it needs to be at Toni’s and done by Sunday evening.  There’s also a Musketeer Vampire world novella to finish.  Oh, and the trademark “Kitten and Dragon Christmas Card” to draw.  So.  No rest for the wicked.  I’m up and about to go fight the coffeemaker, then get dressed in something warm so I can work.

I should go to the thrift store and see if I can find something for an art desk that allows me to use the monitor for models, but this MIGHT wait till next weekend because I don’t know about y’all but I don’t feel like carrying heavy furniture in light snow.

Now below is the continuing installment of Between The Night And The Morrow.

Through the flawless palace of fairykind Prince Darcy came striding, his spurs striking the glimmering floors in rhythm with his angry footfalls, his mouth set in a tight line, his eyes flashing the fire of displeasure.

If he were asked, he could not even say what had first disturbed him. The way Miss Elizabeth Titania Bennet so adroitly set the spells of enchantment upon him, or the way she’d let her middle name slide out so smoothly, so uncaring. Worse, he couldn’t tell if the fact that his anger was not directed at her had more to do with the fact that she had bespelled him, or the fact that he’d been lied to by his king and grandfather.

He and Bingley, aye, and Carola, also, had ridden their fairy steeds from the mortal world and through the magical forests of the night, on the way back to the hill, and he was vaguely aware that Bingley had tried to talk to him, that Carola might have tried to gentle him. He had some confused memory of her hand on his arm, trying to call him from his black mood, but he had not talked. And he’d not stopped. He’d spurred his horse on, and now he drove himself on, ignoring the courtiers that bowed and the ladies that curtseyed, and even Georgiana who said, “Fitzwilliam!” – his childhood name.

And now that he thought about it, it struck the ear as a very unlikely name for a fairy prince, a Lord of the elves. And now that he thought about it, he felt his teeth grinding upon each other, even as he heard his sister’s agitated steps speed up to catch up with him.

In vain, as he’d reached the doors of the throne room, smooth, polished doors being opened for him by two tall elves with the dark hair of the southern peoples, the marble countenance of those brought up in the king’s service. The King! Prince Darcy’s grandfather, who had much to explain!

He sat in the throne, in his full majesty, Titania beside him, the lady for whom Miss Bennet was named, and Darcy snorted at it, and approached far too close to the throne before he remembered to halt and bow. And even then he would never have done it if the guards at the foot of the throne stairs hadn’t moved, in a sudden slide, as though to block his attack. He wondered what his face must show – and what his magic flare – if they’d react thus to a prince of the blood.

“Darcy!” the king said, a tone of surprise in his voice, but he did not ask what happened, nor demand that Darcy give a report, as he doubtless would normally do. Instead, he stared at Darcy, his mouth a little open, his eyebrows rising. And Titania, his lady, leaned into him and clutched his muscular arm with her delicate hand which appeared to be gloved in spider web woven entirely of silver. But she said naught.

“Your majesty,” Darcy said, after what felt like a very long time, in which he strived to find his voice. And then, because he felt as though he needed to remind himself of these honors, as much as he needed to remind the one he addressed, “Sovereign of the high court of the elves, Commander of the magical isles, King of the storm and the lightening, Emperor of the Air,” he took a deep breath. He saw his grandfather start to half rise from the throne with alarm and wondered how oddly his voice must ring. “Whyfore did you lie to me?”

The king opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. His wife’s hand squeezed his arm, visibly. “I?” he said. “Lie?”

Darcy inclined his head, not only in respect, but because he’d prefer to look at his highly polished boots, and the silver spurs shining on them, than at his grandfather’s face, right then. What he read there, he was afraid, would lead him to commit some folly. “You, your majesty, lied to me, your own kinsman, you liegeman, as you sent me out to brave the mortal world.”

The king said nothing. Perhaps it was better that he did not speak, Darcy thought, and looking up, he found that the king was looking at him, his expression indecipherable. “You lied to me, your majesty, when you said that the Bennet girls were descended from your majesty.”

“But–” the king said, and looked genuinely puzzled. “But… they are!”

“Oh, aye, and that they might be, but you know, as well as you know the uncounted years of your unnumbered life, that there are ways to lie which have nothing to do with words. You led me to believe… you led me to assume… that these girls were the result of an… an encounter with a mortal. Nothing more.”

The king again didn’t answer. Darcy fancied that he looked paler. “When in fact, your majesty…” he cleared his throat. “Both your majesties know that this cannot be true. That these girls are, in fact, descended from both of you. That my grandmother is these girls’ ancestor as surely as you are… grandfather.”

The magic the king tried to throw at Darcy was so clumsily aimed that Darcy had time to see it coming and to block it. He realized it was supposed to compel him to keep his mouth shut, at the same time that his grandfather must have realized it had missed. He brought his silvery eyebrows down over his eyes. He glared at the assembled company, and then down at Darcy, “This is not the place, son,” he said, using a word and a tone he rarely if ever employed to his grandson. “If you feel yourself injured, if you wish to discuss this, you must come with me. Into my private chambers.”

Darcy closed his hands tight with rage. “I wish we’d speak before the court.”

The king’s eyebrows went up, in disbelief. “Is this your challenge then, grandson? Do you intend to rule this kingdom tonight?” He spoke with incredulity, and his wife’s hand squeezed his arm tighter, and she whispered something in his ear.

It was the look on their faces, which should have been anger, but was not, that brought Darcy to his senses, in a sudden, cold awakening, as though he’d been doused in freezing rain. He knew that sometimes, in the smaller hills under his grandfather’s command elf lords fought their heirs – or their rivals – for the domain. He’d never heard of its happening in the halls of the high king. But then there was a lot he’d never heard of happening. And he realized, in a crash of sobriety that didn’t set his anger in flight but made him rise above it as though it belonged to someone quite different, that if it came to that – if he challenged his grandfather – he would lose. And then what would be left for him, but that mortal world, and those flawed creatures out there? And all while the traitor rounded, seeking to destroy all of fairyland. No.

No time for family quarrels. He forced his hands to open and inclined his head. “Your majesty commands,” he said.

He saw Titania’s hand unclench from Oberon’s arm, as both king and queen rose, and the court fluttered out of the way, and the chamberers moved, fast, with torches and lanterns to light the way along the glimmering hallway, and throw open the door to Oberon’s private chambers.

*This is chapter ELEVEN (can’t count) of witchfinder, the Fantasy novel I’m posting here for free, one chapter every Friday.  I’ve been posting director’s commentary at the end of chapters, but I think it detracts from the experience, so I’ll do that on Sunday, instead, for the previous chapter.  If your conscience troubles you getting something for free, do hit the donate button on the right side and down.  Anyone donating more than $6 will get a non-drm electronic copy of Witchfinder in its final version, when it’s published.  This also allows us to buy the very expensive food that Euclid (upon whom Pythagoras, aka Peesgrass of the refinishing mysteries is based) seems to need.  And, oh, yeah, the cover sucks, but I haven’t had time for a new one.

Oh, this is in pre-earc format, meaning you’ll find the occasional spelling mistake and sentence that makes no sense.  It’s not exactly first draft, but it’s not at the level I’d send to a publisher, yet.*

For first chapter, look here

For tenth chapter, look here

The Spider And The Web

Nell woke up.  She woke up with no consciousness of having been asleep, or any time having disappeared.

It was rather like waking or dreaming she’d wakened, and not being sure which.  Had she slept before, when she’d imagined herself in the sunlit park with Sydell?  Or did she sleep now?

Now she was in the same park, but it was the dead of night, and the park was deserted.  Strangely, it was winter too, though it had not been cold when she’d been there during the day.  Now there was frost on the trees – or at least something white frosted the branches.  The lake stood motionless like a mirror.  There was no sound, either, though the park was not that large and from where she stood she should be able to hear the noise of carriages trundling through the night, or at least the noise of swans splashing in the lake.  Any noise.  Anything, even the rustle of leaves or grass blades.

Instead, everything was very quiet.  It felt as if she were trapped in one of those dreams where silence has a physical presence and can envelop all.

She took a step forward, and that too was like walking in a dream. *I don’t like it* she thought, but the truth was that she didn’t have to like it.  She didn’t have to give consent to it.

“I am asleep,” she said, but the words came to her oddly, and she knew she wasn’t.  Each step she took seemed to weight too much and take too long, and she walked all the way to the edge of the lake, slowly, very slowly.  Every step seemed to take a million years.  Each moment was unnaturally prorogued.

“I must think,” she told herself.  “I must think where I am and how I came to be here, and what I must do.”

“Sydell.  I met with Sydell and he rifled through my mind and took from it all the matters pertaining to Seraphim Darkwater and to whatever it is he’s doing with the other worlds.  All of it.”  And that was bad and she knew it was bad, but she didn’t count on the surge of panic that followed those words, on the feeling that there was more in her mind than pertained to the fate of two very nice, but let’s face it, somewhat hapless young men who had broken the law in pursuit of justice as they saw it.  No, there was more there.  Enough, she thought, that could tilt the universe on its axis and make the world a very dangerous place indeed.  Antoine had told her–

But when she tried to pursue what Antoine had told her, it receded before her mind, and she couldn’t pin it down.  Something about her mind and its memories.  Something about locking them from prying eyes.  “But you should have taught me how to do it, Antoine,” she said, talking to the still air, the silent night, the cold-frosted trees standing, their pale branches gleaming in the moonlight like lost souls begging for mercy.  “Because without you, my mind has got rifled through and picked, and whatever Sydell found in it caused him to send me to–”

To send her where?  She’d reached the edge of the lake and looking down she saw the water.  It was water, but it was unreally smooth, like a mirror, so smooth that it might well be solid, like glass calm and unreflective.

And from a place a long time ago, when she’d been just a young computer programer, who seemed to have fallen into a fantasy novel and in love with a powerful wizard, she heard Antoine’s voice talking.  “Sleeping Beauty,” he said.  “Why do you think she slept a hundred years?  And never woke?  And never tried to fight her enchantment?  Why do you think all those around her slept?  The brambles never grew.  That is a silly invention in your world.  And no mice nested in the cupboard, no rat nibbled the sleepers.  Do you know why?  There are worlds in between the worlds that exist anew each ticking of the clock.  Each time the clock ticks, reality hesitates and wavers, as many possible futures rush in and solidify into one.  Just one present.  Unending futures.  From such unending worlds, though a magical accident, the multiverse’s many worlds were created.  But in each of these worlds, the infinity of futures coalesces to just one second of present.

“And between those many futures and the solidified present lies a unit of time.  It’s so brief that in it your heart would not have the time to beat once.  It is so long that, to someone caught in it, it will last forever and the future will never arrive.

“A strong enough magician can spin another human – usually just one.  One shudders at the thought of what it would take to really spin an entire castle and all its inhabitants into that space.

“– into that time.  That time between future and present.  That time that will never be present nor future nor past, but a place apart from time.  In them no one dies, though it could be said no one really lives, ever.  And you can stay forever, imprisoned.  Alone.”

Alone, Nell thought, looking at the water still like glass.  Alone.

But there was a way out.  There had to be.  Sleeping beauty had come back.  The prince had kissed her.  But that would need a prince, would it not.

“So I’m out of luck, since all I have is a duke.” she thought and wanted to laugh, which is how she knew she was really tired and really scared, because laughter was inappropriate in here.  Laughter had no place in this land where nothing would change and where she would be a prisoner forever.

No.  No.  there had to be a prince and a kiss.  There had to be a way of attracting him.

The problem of Earth, she thought, and the problem of growing up on Earth was that one never got the to learn how to get out of these kind of situations.  If you could believe the people of Avalonis, the Earth and Avalonis, and the hundreds of other earths had all spun from the same unified Earth.

The theory of when it had spun apart varied, and some maintained it had happened well before human history begun, and others that it was as recent as a few hundred years ago.  Yet others, saner, thought that it had taken place at different times for different worlds.

But all of them believed they’d all come from common stock and had common legends.  And that these legends, perforce, came from similar events, or encoded similar knowledge.  And by and large that was true in Avalonis, where one could learn from the perils of Cinderella – although mostly what one learned, at least according to Antoine, was not to perform love-spells involving one’s own father and a nice-seeming neighbor lady, when one was a very young and inexperienced witch.  And as for Little Riding Hood, that charming cautionary tale had prevented many a young girl from giving her pet dog characteristics of her human playmates in order to have him better play house.

But Nell didn’t think that anyone had ever told her what the real meaning of Sleeping Beauty was.  And in the world in which she’d been so fortunate as to grow up, the best known version said that she should send blue birds or something of the sort to call Prince Charming to come and get her out of this bind.

She snorted loudly.  So much for Prince Charming.  If he only answered to dial-a-blue-bird she’d be lost in here forever, and he’d never know where she’d gone.  Because, after all, nothing moved here.  No bluebirds.  No wind.  Not even air.  And she only remained alive because she couldn’t die.

But she could move, her mind protested.   She was an intelligent being and she could move, even though the rest of this world might be locked between past and future, never being present.  And if she still had the ability to think and to move, then the only thing that she could use to call someone to her rescue was … her own mind.

Part of her wanted to rebel and to say that she needed no one for rescue; that she was a self sufficient woman; that she’d been taught to rescue herself.  But the old legends didn’t work that way.  They were older than mankind and certainly older than any vestige of self-determination, than any idea of females being embarrassed for being beholden to a male.  The legends, and the puzzles they encoded went all the way back to the beginning, when a human without a tribe was lost, and when a tribe was often just a man, a woman and their offspring.  In those times, in that place, you needed the rest of them to rescue you.

That meant… that meant, she thought, that if she had bonded with someone, preferably someone male, she would be able to now call her to him by magical means, and he would break through the frozen stillness of this nowhere place and rescue her.

But she had never bonded with anyone.  Well, not that way.

“Perhaps Antoine,” she said, aloud, and tried to take it seriously, but she knew it wasn’t.  Antoine was just a dream.  He had been the dream of a young girl – the extraordinary, enchanting wizard who existed even though all the laws of the world said he shouldn’t.  But lately, just as they landed in Avalonis, she’d started to wonder if he was truly all she’d thought, if he was as powerful, as urbane, as learned, but most of all if he was as good as she’d willingly dreamed him.

She didn’t know the answer to that.  She still didn’t.  But she knew that having doubts had severed the connection between them.  If there had ever been a connection.  Now when she tried to reach for Antoine’s essence, for his magical strength, she felt nothing.

It was like pulling at one end of a rope, which was supposed to be tied to solid rock, and instead feeling the rope come up, all of a sudden, slack and too light.  It was like taking a step in the dark and finding nothing under one’s foot.

Antoine would not work.

Gabriel, perhaps?  Gabriel Penn had seemed a good solid man.  She’d liked his strength and his persistence, and his refusal to let his half-brother die.  Given what the society was, and the difference in their positions, she could only imagine how many slights and insults Gabriel must have endured, and yet he was willing to risk it all for the legitimate heir.

Yes, he could be a rock in times of trouble, and though she’d not perceived any attraction from him to her, he had told the duchess they were engaged.  Perhaps that was a sign of a wish he dared not express?

She looked at the lake, in the frozen not quite light of the not quite night.  It wasn’t she realized, that it was nighttime here, but more that the light that was here had solidified like water.  It was light on the trees, not snow.  And yet she felt colder just thinking about it.

Her mind, gently, carefully, quested in the direction of Gabriel Penn, thinking of him and of the power she’d perceived from him, and trying to establish a connection.  Even if the connection was no more than a vague interest from him, that and her good will ought to establish a bond strong enough to–

To what?  To have him ride up to her rescue?  No.  She didn’t think so.  She suspected it was more that establishing a bond would make it possible for her to pull herself up to where he was, to drag herself from this frozen never-was to the present.  Wherever he was and whatever he was doing, as embarrassing as it might be, at least it was somewhere alive.

Her questing mind met with something.  It wasn’t like looking for Antoine and finding nothing where his mind and power should be.  Gabriel was a solid presence in her magical quest, taking up a solid portion of her magical map.  But when she tried to pull up, to pull to him, to feel him – her mind careened into a blank wall.

No, not a wall, a gate.  She could see it in her mind’s eye – tall and made of something hard and cold.  Metal, or perhaps stone.  And locked.

For a moment she thought of shaking the gate, of rattling it, but realized it was less than forlorn hope.  The gate dwarfed her and loomed over her, and there was nothing in her human form that could open that.  From beyond it came a disturbing song, in a language she couldn’t understand.

She had the impression quite suddenly that the real Gabriel Penn was someone quite different, quite other than the servants he appeared to be.  It was nonsense, but…  She felt him as almost an alien being, someone she couldn’t hope to comprehend.

That left…  She gritted her teeth and through her mind passed in review the many people she had met in her time in Avalonis.  Most of her meetings with men were less than inconsequential.  Other than Sydell she’d had no constant male contact.  And Sydell had sent her here.  She was sure of it.

So that left…  Seraphim.  What possible contact could he have with her?  Well, he’d risked his life to save her.  But he’d risked his life, too, to save the lion boy, and yet she didn’t think that he had any interest in lions.  Or in boys, for that matter.

But he was kind and he was – if she guessed his character properly – hard put to resist the claims of someone in need.  And she was in need.  So, if not with her attraction, she could forge a bind with her need.

Thinking of her great need and that without him she would be locked in here forever, worse than a ghost, neither dead nor alive, till she went slowly mad in an eternity of solitude, she reached for the power she’d seen as Seraphim Darkwater’s.  At the same time she called the duke’s aristocratic profile, his laughing green eyes to her mind.

For a moment it felt like she’d met with the same wall that surrounded Gabriel, only if Nell had to picture this one she’d picture it as those brambles grown around Sleeping Beauty’s castle.  A profusion of defensive thorns, things to keep others away.

“But I need help,” she said, and cringed to say it, and yet – desperate – pushed her need at him, forcing him to see that without him, she was barred from life forever.

Whatever was holding her broke so suddenly that she had the impression of being picked up and lifted, then thrown bodily into the water.

She started to sink, under the weight of her skirts and petticoats, then managed to paddle enough to keep herself afloat as she struggled to remove the water-logged petticoats before they pulled her under.  As she did, details sank in – the murmur of the wind in trees around this lake, and something else.  The lake was full of boats, the boats filled with men who looked like gardeners or stable boys and who carried a lantern a piece.  Each boat held two men, one of whom rowed while the other stood, other holding the lantern aloft and trying to look into the murky depths of the lake.

There were two boats making for her as fast as the men rowing could make it.  The man with the lantern called from the nearest one, “It is not him.  Not the young master.”

“Who is it then?” the standing man from the other nearest boat called.”

“It’s a lady,” the nearest man called.  “Someone tell His Grace there’s a lady in the trout pond”

Or how to write fast and as well as you can at your stage (whichever that is.)

First – stop fighting the words.
Yes, yes, the words are important – eventually – but for now, stop fighting them.  Tell yourself before this is sent in, it will be read three or four more times, and you’ll catch that – then.   If you can’t remember an exact word, or if you know you’re repeating a word, let it go.  At this stage the lightening bug is as good as the lightening bolt, metaphorically speaking.  It’s easier to think ONLY words and get really good once you have the basic structure/scenes/characters down.

Second – Stop fighting the story.
Okay, for instance in A Few Good Men I realized with ages where they were, the ick factor for a particular event was THROUGH the roof.  (No, can’t explain.  Just trust me.  Yes, it made the victims more sympathetic, but, as a parent, it set off ALL sorts of alarms.  I couldn’t take it. ) So I aged everyone concerned four years.  Two problems.  First, my arithmetic sucks when I’m mid book.  Second, “Curse you search replace.”  So it made it to betas with screwed up numbers.  Sigh.  I’ll fix it on next pass, before editor sees it.  No big.  Allow for that.  Don’t drive yourself nuts.  Your first pass is not your last.

Third – if story changes mid stream, make notes, do not go back and change.  Say halfway through the book you realize your narrator is the murderer and you did not foreshadow.  Make notes at that point “First chapter, make sure he says…” Etc.  save it for revision.  When I started out and was still learning plotting, I often ended up with a beginning for one novel, a middle for another, and an end for yet another.  BUT that was still fixable in revision.  You just go back and make all the “pointers” match.  I use sticky notes for these, so often my desk looks like a porcupine at the end of the novel.  (And btw, these days novels don’t end up tri-partite often.  First novel that wasn’t that way was Draw One in the Dark.)

Fourth – don’t think of this as “your one and only” If you do that, then you want to make it perfect.  It will never be perfect.  The closest you’ll come to perfection will be your aggregate work, not each of them.  Make each as good as you can, but give yourself three revisions tops, then one after betaing.  If you do more than that, you’ll start introducing as many issues as you fix.  TRUST me.  If you think “But this is my one and only” think… if RAH had only written For Us The Living and tried to make it the BEST thing ever.  (Gags.)  And I’ll point out he got stuck trying to publish that for like… ten years.   Or if Pratchett had ONLY ever written The Carpet People and devoted himself to fixing it, forever.  Or if I had only written Glass Pedestal (cold dead hands, children, and not even then, as I’ll HAUNT anyone who publishes it.)  I came darn near only writing the pre-minoan thing — eighth novel — once I hit that.  It ate years of my life.  In retrospect… it couldn’t have been made publishable with what I knew at the time, which brings us to fifth

Fifth – sometimes you have to admit, to quote my son’s post on G-d and pantsing that you can write a kidney stone that even you can’t pass.  I.e. you’re creating a novel you can’t write yet.  This is good – you’re reaching, learning, stretching – but sometimes (not every time.  Then you have to just wonder if you’re a trifler with novels) – you have to wonder if you lack the… practice to write that.  Mirrorplay – the minoan thing – was that way for me.  I had no clue how to plot even one novel, and here I was trying to do an epic SERIES.  Now?  Now I can go back and do it, with multiple, fully realized characters.  I finished it, at the time, mind.  I just recognized it wasn’t very good, so it’s sat for near on twenty years.  Now it’s waiting for a time to go back and fix.  IF I’d insisted on just rewriting it till it was good, I’d never have done that learning.  (It’s different, trust me.  You learn different things from different novels.)  I have at least one ex-writers-group member who last I heard HAD spent the last twenty years rewriting her novel…  Not only doesn’t she have the knowledge to recast it, but by now it probably needs recasting.  No, seriously.  It will be soup.  Also, what if the reason it didn’t sell was not that it is badly done, but that the premise has one of the ick factors YOU are blind to?  (But the rest of the world isn’t?)  There are tons of this, but to give one that a friend told me about from when she was in RWA and her Critique Partner was obsessed with sweaty, unwashed for weeks men and couldn’t understand that other women would go “EWWWW”.
If that’s what’s keeping your book from selling (or doing well in the new market) you’ll NEVER know it.  Move on.  Grow up.  Eventually you’ll come back to it, and weirdly unless it’s a true fetish, ten years down the road you might go “WHY did I think that was cool/cute/whatever.”  Kind of likne in art, when you stick, you go away and work on another piece, then come back to that one.

Six – consider short stories.  Yes, they’re a completely different art form.  But it will teach you beginnings, hooks, how to introduce a character, etc. with MUCH less investment than a novel.  Try it on weekends, or some day when you’re not doing novel work.  Train yourself in writing those fast and under the principle “It doesn’t have to be perfect, it has to be good.”  Sometimes they become novels.  Deal.  And hey, you can use them as loss leaders, once you’re ready to get that novel out.

Seven – Keep writing.  If you keep writing your quota (mine is 5k words.  Other people are saner) a day, you WILL improve and gain experience.  At least, if you’re also reading and studying how people do things.

Now, stop reading the blog and go write

– wait, leave me a comment, first, so I know you read it AND got it   NOW go write.

So, we’ve been talking about writers going solo and working without a net.  So far so good.  Writers can subcontract editing.  They can subcontract proofing. They can subcontract art and even document conversion.

Can they subcontract confidence?

What am I talking about, you say?  Well, I’ll be blunt.  First let me start with the fact that writers’ belief in their abilities and their abilities are often totally at odds with each other.  And rarely the way you’d expect.

Very few writers who suck on ice will believe they are the world’s gift to writing.  Oh, sure, there are a few, but those have usually got that way because of “critical acclaim” – also, they’re not usually bad as such.  They might not be to my – or your taste – but they are decent of their kind.

No, writers – absent a few strange wanna bes – after their earliest steps when everyone thinks their stuff is great because they don’t know enough to know it sucks, are alone among the creative professions by thinking, most of the time, that their stuff sucks.

I don’t know why.  Perhaps it is that we use words, which is what everyone uses to speak, normally.  So… how do you judge “good”.

Well, good is what holds your attention.  But you find out early on what holds your attention is not necessarily what holds other’s.  Besides, you have a vested interest in this world.  Otherwise you’d never have written it, right?

And then by the time you’re minimally published, you will know that people can find stuff in your books you never meant to put in.  I’ve been accused of everything and WORSE praised for things that I not only can’t see in my books but hope to heaven aren’t there.

So you get odd.  You start wondering what is there, and … is it any good?

For years, while I was unpublished, I used my writers’ group as my touchstone.  “Is it good, guys?  Is it good?”  Yeah, they were newbies too, but they lived outside my head.  And if they liked it… well… maybe other people would.

I confess for the last… five? Years I’ve used my agent mostly as a touch stone.  If the agent approved of it, well, she must know what’s marketable, right?  Even if it wasn’t true, it was encouragement…

So, now I’m agentless.  I’m putting a lot of my stuff up myself.  What sells is flabbergasting me, as it’s often my earliest, clumsiest work, or that with a really weird bend (Think back to the Muppets and HEAR this with the right voice “Nuuuuuns in SPACE!) Mind you I haven’t put up the juvenalia and won’t put that under my own name BUT well…  When you finish something… how do you know it’s good?

This has come home to me today because having finished A Few Good Men I’m trying not to rush the betas and ask how it reads and… do they think it will find an audience?  I really have no clue.  I see all the clumsy spots under a magnifying glass and I worry it sucks.

At the same time my older son and a friend who also finished work are convinced THEIRS sucks.  So… It’s like this – my husband has read son’s and says it’s quite good (And no, he’s not easy on us.  So likely he’s right.)

How do you know it’s good?

Well… first, accept you’re the worst judge of your own work.  It’s possible to gain perspective on it, sure.  First, forget you wrote it.  Then let it sit for ten years.

Oh, you don’t HAVE ten years?  Then accept.  You don’t KNOW if it’s good.  You just don’t.

Second – find ten friends.  Give manuscript to ten friends.  IF more than three find the same problem, you have an issue.  If not, ignore it.  And pay attention to the “general” feel.  Like “I couldn’t put it down.”  Or “You sent me that?  Are you sure?”  Or “Uh, it was great till chapter twenty.”  Or… if everyone is saying that (you’ll ALWAYS get a couple of those, but) or if eight people are saying one of those, then that gives you an idea where the book stands.

Third – Kris Rusch tells me after a certain level a writer is at a certain level.  Yes, I know “Oh, thank you, oh, great Sybil.  We bow before your knowledge.”  I find – though I had trouble believing it – it’s by and large true.  If you’ve written more than one “decent” story, by whatever means, chances are all of your stories are decent to an extent.  I.e. you’re not pulling beginning idiocy.  BUT… is it good?

Well, this defaults to:

Fourth – Alma Alexander told me at a con that everything you write will be someone’s favorite and someone’s most hated of your works.  This is very freeing.  Let it out.

Fifth – will it sell?  Oh, who knows?  I don’t know.  So, put it out and see.  It might shock you.  (nuuuuns.  In space!)

Sixth – You’re working without a net.  You can learn what sells, given time.  You can learn what’s good – to you at least – by reading your favorite writers and analyzing what they do.  You can have sense of where you stand – ask ten friends you trust – but in the end, you’re working without a net.

Are you going to do it?  Or are you going to go back and hide in the shadows, your words unread, your worlds unshared?

Which is it going to be?

You want to be a writer, do you?  There’s the tightrope.  Get up there and DANCE.

Update: As for check the statistics on what sells.  Well, I have 19 back list short stories out, so I just went and looked.  Yep.  Dragon’s Blood and With Unconfined Wings (a short about gun-packing sisters of St. Lucia of the Spaceways in a far frontier colony) are still outselling everything else by an unreal margin.  Does this mean I finally get to/will be forced to write Her Crown of Stars, Her Trusty Burner?

The other day while driving to Denver for Greek greasy spoon food (hey, listen, buddy, you have your addictions, I have mine.)   Dan and I found ourselves in the urgent need to discuss the implications and ramifications of The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag with the boys.

And I found myself thinking of it in terms of writing.  (Look, I realized I was in serious trouble – possibly of an eternal kind, if one believes in such things, and this one does – when I answered the eternal “Why would a just G-d allow evil in the world?” with “Because otherwise it would be a pretty boring plot and no one would read it.” [Am now trying to fight the horrible suspicion that what He’s writing is actually a series called “World Wars and The Fall and rise and fall of civilizations.]) Update:  This is a common perception of writers, hence my son’s post, here.

This led me by one of those sideways mental jumps one does to wondering about young writers and shoddy work.  And no, I’m NOT referring to Jonathan Hoag. I’m referring to the story in Jonathan Hoag where – SPOILER – the world is the creation of a young artist, who painted over an early and shoddy work.

And I thought of the experience I went through with writing this last book.  (Actually the last three.)  And realized that while there is the tendency, which I mentioned before, for young writers to end stories badly because that “feels” serious, it’s an odd sort of thing because you often feel that less than the smaller movements in the work of a more seasoned artist.

There is a line in Murder In Retrospect in which Poroit talking to the murderess talks of her not knowing: All the grown-up emotions – pity, sympathy, understanding. The only things you know – have ever known – are love and hate.

It is sort of like that for beginner writers.  It’s not easier to paint in primary colors, but it might look that way to the young, inexperienced and/or lacking in confidence.  It’s certainly easier to make an impact.  Paint a house so huge and so black (or red, or yellow) it can be seen across the room and people will notice it.  They might even admire it…

But it’s not grown up work.  The shading isn’t there, nor the fine tuning.  It’s unlikely you’ll cry at the sight of it, like grown ups can be brought to tears at the sight of some of DaVinci’s work.  (well, I can.   Your mileage may vary.)

Perhaps this is because I started attempting to write seriously very early, or perhaps – and my mentoring experience seems to indicate this – it is a curve every writer goes through, predicated less on lack of experience in the world than in lack of experience in expressing it.

The curve seems to be that you start out doing primary colors and big blocks – or in other words, dramatic emotions, big events.  Your character faces the death of his entire family.  And they were buried in a rain of fish.  And the entire world was turned into a fish fry.  And…

And none of it feel like much of anything, perhaps because they’re lost amid other blocks, all of them competing for attention.  It can be pulled off in a short story, but less so in a novel.

Then you start having a suspicion your work is crude and rough, and you try to refine it.  At the end of this process, you find yourself trying to avoid the big movements of the earlier work and all you have is small events, small actions, small emotions.  It’s all an indistinct pastel.  Very pretty at times, very artistic, but pastel.

If you get stuck in this phase, you get prizes and university professors speak of you in reverent tones.  And, if you’re very lucky, normal readers will keep your book on the bedside table for those nights they can’t sleep.

If that’s not your goal and you go past that, you find yourself where I’m now.  I’m not painting the big blocks of shouting color anymore, but I’m not afraid to have the occasional rotting fish fall on a character, or even have one or two of them killed by a plague of gnats.  Weirdly, I’m getting the other extreme in too which I could never do earlier – the humor – so that hopefully sometimes the reader finds himself crying through his/her laughter.

At least I hope that’s what I’m doing.  I might be doing a pastel background with the occasional blobby bit of red building.  Who knows?

But what it feels like is like I now have the softer emotions, but the occasional hard note too.  And those hard notes hit hard and seem to strip me of all defense and occasionally turn me inside out.  The impact is that much stronger, against the pastel background.

All this to explain why I now don’t need to destroy the world to “feel” it.  Sometimes it’s enough to give my character a bad day.  If the character is lovable enough.  If the day is bad enough.

[On reading my old stuff, etc, another collection of short stories “Five Unlikely Foretellings” (narrowly beat out Five Unlikely Ukases) is up on Amazon, Smashwords and B &N.]

With Much Delayed Directors Commentary On Witchfinder

I often think I came into writing by a weird route.  No, I don’t mean into publications, I mean into writing itself.  But perhaps we all do, because I’ve now mentored for something like ten years, and it seems like each person is highly individual.

Add to that that I THINK the fledgelings I attract are – at best – odd (there are probably other words for them, yes) and that means I often find myself flabbergasted by things in how to write manuals that inform you – rather solemnly – that “starting too early is a typical beginner mistake.”

Of course, the minute I come across something like that, I immediately acquire one or two fledgelings who do this.  Which is more proof that the universe is, if not solipsistic exactly, at least a tightly plotted novel written by a Writer who is fond of the ironic detail.

But there is one thing I ONLY ever found one fledgeling who thought – in fact a very talented, but for that massive fatal flaw fledgeling – that a novel was a length, and whom I could not get to understand that a novel is a unit of action.

And now a few of you are scratching your head (I wish you’d stop.  You’re leaving dandruff all over the blog.  Ew) and going “But isn’t a novel a length?”

Well, yes, of course it is.  And there are a lot of beginners who start writing a short story, then end up with forty thousand words which – well, this happened to me and it was the old days – means they have to figure out if it can be cut, divided into four coherent stories and/or expanded by double.  (Nowadays you sell it as a short novel on Amazom for some relatively cheap price, say 3.99.

What I mean is that a novel isn’t ONLY a length.  This is where I say I came into writing through an odd route – having a degree in literature because digit dyslexia forbid engineering, natural squeamishness barred me from medicine, I wasn’t larcenous enough for psychology, and law required my moving away from home, which my dad wouldn’t allow (and yes, there were other reasons, too.) – because I learned how to write novels by studying plays.  In plays, being less wordy, the structure is more obvious.  Oh, also Portuguese school system started pounding us with ancient Greek plays round about sixth grade and went all the way to Shakespeare in College.  (And Wagner.  There is a place in h*ll reserved for the German culture teacher who made us memorize Wagner librettos.  Don’t go there. {Well, it’s reserved for other reasons, too, since he was a defrocked priest who was well known to take liberties with female students stupid enough to attend office hours.  Oh, and also he didn’t wash.  Since I was not stupid enough to attend office hours, the only trauma I retain is that the mention of Wagner brings back the smell in that classroom.  Fortunately I never liked Wagner.})

In a play it becomes startlingly obvious that each act is a unit of action – there is a try fail sequence and something is solved, or isn’t – and that the play itself is a unit of action.

I made the mistake, when first coming into writing, of equating acts with chapters.  This meant at the end of a chapter, I gave the impression that problem was solved and now we’d move on. Yes, I know smart playwrights don’t do that either.  But still, if people are in a theater, likely they’ll stay.  With a book… well.

Lately my “acts” have been morphing into “Sections” of up to six chapters, which DST had, DSR came out with, and AFGM is big on.

But I still don’t close off the action completely in the section, or I am careful to introduce the next step.  (To train myself to do this, for years, I’d take the first paragraph of the next chapter and tack it at the end of the last chapter.  Nine times out of ten, it works.)

Anyway, a novel is a unit of action (so is a short.  Yes, the difference is size between a short and a novel.  BUT it’s unit of action between a novel and glop.)  It is about resolving something, be it concrete (the aliens took over the world, we must stop them) or emotional (I want to kill everyone, give me a reason not to) or artsy and pseudo-literary (we’ll stop when the reader feels like he’d rather chew off his own arm than read another pointless page.)

ANY coherent story is a unit of action, ranging from the short short at 2 thousand words to goat gagger at 200 000.

BUT if you think a novel is a length and you forget that it is a unit, then you end with glop.

To be honest, I don’t know if this is normal, or if it’s this particular writers’ issue.  It is possible that it’s based on some neurological thing, because the same writer has major, major issues with the symptom that leads up to this.  And that symptom, at least, is fairly common and I still battle against it periodically – though normally not to the extremes this writer does.  Frankly the only writer having issues approaching this is my friend who has Aspergers (highly functional Aspergers, but all the same) so I wonder if it’s related to emotional projection and empathy.

The problem that leads to glop – at least in its extreme – is the inability to properly weight incidents in your novel/short/whatever.  And no, by that I don’t mean you should tie led weights to your characters (don’t tempt me.  That and a dark river, and I’d be rid of some of them forever!)

I mean that your prison rescue where major characters die shouldn’t take the same page space, and certainly should have more feeling poured into it than the incident where the character’s favorite cup gets broken.  If you give them the same space, refer to them as often in subsequent pages, have an entire city mourn the loss of the cup, have your character traumatized by both incidents in equal measures, etc., you end up with glop.

Now, of course, I don’t have weighting problems to THAT extent.  But I do have them.  In fact, often this is what revision is all about.  Either because the pantser half threw fresh incidents in (I swear sometimes writing is a collaboration with myself!) or because the character changed in the writing, I’ll often discover that, oh, I need to give more weight to the thing with the dog, because it’s a sign he’s coming out of his shell – and able to attach to dogs, but not humans yet.  Or that some incident that was supposed to be funny has to be eliminated all together because it distracts from rising action.

Which is where we come to the director’s commentary for Witchfinder – you knew I remembered, right? – The only problem with the last chapter is something new I’m discovering ONLY with this novel – though I had this problem before, in a never finished novel that I call jokingly “A cast of thousands, with elephants.”: Each of the secondary pov characters is strong enough to sustain a novel

Honestly, I don’t know what to do about this, but I might borrow a page from Romance writers and truncate the secondary, tie up the principal (not literally, though trust me, I’ve thought of it too) and then spin off the secondary characters’ histories as sequels.

I won’t say I’m thrilled about his.  Just what I needed, another series.  But it seems to be what I have to do, unless I want to write a mega-goatgagger.

I was going to write this earlier, but I got highjacked by the big galloots who live in my household.  Seeing me in that rare time defined as “between books” they crowded around me early this morning and begged for waffles, which I’ve made and they’ve consumed.  (No, sending them to Denny’s or such won’t work, as these are low carb waffles.  So, I have to make them.)  Of course, I had to stay around while they ate and participate in the near limitless flow of very bad puns.

Robert (aka #1 son) and I have decided it would probably be best for BOTH of our sanities if we didn’t even get in touch after he left, because we seriously worsen each other’s mental health case.  If one of us can come up with a ridiculous premiss for a story, the other one goes “I can top that.”  And if I say I can write a novel in two days, he’ll say “Then I should be able to write one in one.”  And then of course I say “Twelve hours.  I bet I can do it in twelve hours.” Yeah, it’s that bad.  (I become a functional teen male in those circumstances.)  Even Christmas cards between us are likely to make us worse.  OTOH we enjoy each other’s company way too much.  I was telling him I woke up thinking how completely unmarketable A Few Good Men is and “What was I thinking?” and he said “Well, mom, I just spent Thanksgiving break writing “Catbo, first blood”” (which is not the title, but it’s close enough to the concept.  His story is actually called Ratskiller.)

So, this comes down to “writing what has to be.”  There is this thing every good writer knows, and every newby and wannabe thinks we’re nuts, which is called “What the story wants” and “the true story flow.”

What do I mean by that?  I mean that sometimes, just sometimes, you hit something in your story and you find you can’t write it that away.  And sometimes years later you realize the way it wanted to be was “right” in the sense that it made it deeper or more marketable, or fit better with what had come before.  Like, not making Tom’s father a total SOB in Draw One In The Dark, say.

But this is not always true.  And this is where being under contract to write something can drive the author insane, because you go “But I have to write it this way.  It’s what they bought on proposal.”  And sometimes the changes aren’t things that make the novel more marketable or better.  I’m very much afraid A Few Good Men is weird enough to not find a substantial public. (AND that’s JUST the Usaian religion which figures BIG.  We don’t even go into the rest.)   Of course, that doesn’t matter so much now, because if Baen doesn’t want it, I can bring it out, and if I put it at 6.99 and it sells 2k books, I can make what I make for most of my books.  And surely there are enough crazy people out there to sell 2k books.  It can be a cult classic!

I’m not joking when I say “without the possibility of self-publishing it would have died aborning.”  Is it a good thing I wrote it?  I don’t know.  It’s good for MY mental health, because when a character grabs you by the scruff that hard, you HAVE to write him.  If I’d blocked that one, I probably wouldn’t have written anything for a year.

But then there’s a ton of minor stuff.  Like, Seraphim being called Seraphim.  Or Kyrie being called Kyrie.  Actually names are a good example.  Both book titles and character names come to be from… somewhere (I suspect my toenails.)  This is how come one of the books in progress is Space Opera and insists its name is Winter Prince.  (In fact ALL the books have Prince in the title for that series.  WHY?  No clue.  Yeah, there’s a prince in it, but he’s the romantic foil, and for the love of BOB the main character’s nickname is Lucky (For Lucrezia.)  You’d think the first book being called Lucky’s Revolt would be better, right?  Nope.  Won’t work that way.)

So, where does that stuff come from?  Who knows?  I think we’re broken – as writers – in an interesting enough way that allows writing to occur, but brings into it interesting side effects.

My morning’s reading sort of brought this up, too, sideways, in a way, both in terms of “Can you write art when your contract says you must deliver a can of beans” (And let me tell you I totally understand this from the publisher’s perspective too.  They have to sell many more copies to make their nut, and… well if what they’ve readied for is a can of beans, well… They have to have THAT.)  And in terms of “Are we all nuts, then?”  

Both of those might be worth reading.  And now I’m going to dust, vacuum and draw spaceships.  (Dust and vacuum the house, not spaceships, just so we’re clear here. )

(Those of you looking for the Saturday Austen Fanfic, it’s posted in the post below.  I’m top-posting with an echo of my post at Mad Genius Club today, since this is something that ALL of you OFTEN ask me about.)  Considering the queries hitting my site every other Monday and twice on Sunday, I’m guessing people are getting impatient for my stuff.  I’m getting impatient for my stuff.  This was the first year in… five? that nothing came out.  No, it’s nothing serious just the unfortunate conjunction of the fact that two years ago I hit a wall, after years of pushing to deliver three to four books on schedule, and wrote only one book and that on spec, and that all the publishing houses seem to run slower than normal.  So, for those of you who would like to know what the state of the State (or the state of the Sarah) is, and given the way that I haven’t got around to fixing my stoopid website, here goes nothing:

First, I’ve started putting my back log short stories out with Goldport Press (you, at the back stop giggling.  Yes, Goldport is my made up Colorado Town.  Live with it.  I figure the press owns the Weekly Enquirer which is, in fact, the daily newspaper.)  There are 16 of them for 99 cents a piece on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Smash Words.   I know that 99c is nowadays the established price for a short story or a single song, but it still seems weird to me, so if you can stand to take some stories you might have seen or don’t like as much, I’m putting these out in collections.  Look for Five From Far And Weird and Five Far Futures.  Today I hope to put up Five Unlikely Foretellings, but it might be tomorrow because… well, see at bottom.  Anyway, these are 2.99, so it’s like getting two shorts for free.  Needless to say none of these are DRMed.  The links above go to Amazon, but you can find the same thing in Smashwords and Pubit.

I also have some short stories out with Naked Reader Press and I am way overdue doing the final edit on a short story set in the world of the Vampire Musketeers called First Blood.  It will go in a collection with Kate Paulk and Amanda Green called Sisters In Blood, which will be out next month, just in time for… Christmas?  Whatevers.  The collection will also contain a short story with Kate’s SF-addicted vampire and one with Amanda’s shifter-cop from Nocturnal Origins.  I’ve tried to convince the editorial board that really, really, really, we need three pictures of us aged about ten and photoshoped onto some Victorian scene, but it’s been born upon me that I’m the only one who looked like a vampire child.  (Eh.)

Also out with Naked Reader is A Touch of Night with Sofie Skapski.  Among the things I’m really late editing is A Flaw In Her Magic, not a sequel, but also set in the world of Magical British Empire, if Jane Austen had written in it.  A Touch of Night is Pride, Prejudice, Dragons and werewolves, and A Flaw In Her Magic is Mansfield Park, foretelling, magic, weredragons and werewolves.  I’m hoping to get to it (more explanation at the bottom) so it can also come out in time for Christmas.

Okay, now more traditional publishers.  As most of you know, I’ve delivered A Fatal Stain, the sequel to A French Polished Murder in February.  I’ve been informed it’s scheduled for October 12 — this is what I mean about elongated publishing schedules.  Normally this would have been out this fall, but never mind.  Meanwhile, because I know there are people out there dying for it, but  unfortunately, I can’t do an end run around the house and bring out the fourth before they bring out the third (publishing houses have this nasty habit of putting an option clause for the next book in the series in the contract.  Until they reject the fourth book, or I reject their offer for it — and I haven’t submitted the proposal yet, though it’s in the works) I can’t work in that series.

So, Naked Reader Press will be bringing out, around February/March, depending on my schedule, the first Orphan Kitten mystery by Elise Hyatt.  A math Professor at Colorado University Goldport (the infamous Cug) will move next door to Ben and Nick’s new house (chill),  two doors up from Dyce, Cas and E (chill again!) with his wife and two teen kids, of which the younger is a mathematical genius.  Let’s just say my kids might kill me for this book…  Anyway, the wife wants to be a mystery writer, but gets involved in kitten rescue, when someone drops a bag full of newborn kittens in her yard.  This will be called Deadly Paws. 

Next in order of how many fan mails I get a week is Darkship Thieves.  Here, the problem is entirely mine.  I let the house publishing my mysteries get so under my skin that I delivered Darkship Renegade shamefully late.  I’m hoping Toni can still schedule it for next year, but we’ll see, since I’m about to change the ending a bit.  Hopefully she hasn’t got to it yet.  To compensate, because I wuv you guys (okay, fine, because that’s how it came out) I’m doing A Few Good Men, book one of the Earth Revolution which will go to betas today and to Toni, G-d willing, early December.

Baen has also bought book three of the Shifter series.  For those non initiated book one and two are here  Look for my name or for Draw One In The Dark or Gentleman Takes A Chance.  The third book will be Noah’s Boy and it is the book currently between hands, save for explanation at end of this page.

Also coming out next year, also in October, (wait till you see that Darkship Renegades is scheduled for October.  I hope you guys save your money for that fatal month) from Prime Books  is the first book of the Vampire Musketeers, Sword And Blood.  It’s coming out under Sarah Marques, and it now has a cover:

If you want to read sample chapters, they’re here, but be aware they’re strong meat in the realm of sex and violence, compared to most of my stuff.  (Though A Few Good Men has the highest bodycount of named characters of a book of mine so far.  Eh.)

So, Sarah, a few of you, the brave, the insane, the ones who email me every other day, are asking “What about the Musketeer Mysteries?  Didn’t you promise us Musketeer’s Confessor?”  Indeed I did, but here’s the thing: the house is doing its best to ignore the fact that books two through five are out of contract.  I’m going to try to get a cease and desist letter from an IP atorney before Christmas and hopefully get the rights to those back by the beginning of the year.  I’ve already talked to Naked Reader Press, and they want them.  So, the plan is to get the rights back and then publish these one a month starting June next year, then publish The Musketeer’s Confessor at the end of the sequence and then continue from there.  The reason for the delay in publishing is that I’m unlikely to get all the rights back instantly.  Often takes months.  Even if it doesn’t, I need time to revise and edit, because these books suffered badly from my stress in working with the house.  Also, we’re going to restore the title, so A Death In Gascony will be The Musketeer’s Inheritance and Dying By The Sword will be The Musketeer’s Servant (with subtitles saying “formerly published as”.)  So, wish me luck with that fight.

Other parked stuff…  The Magical British Empire is not likely to revert any time soon.  Since it’s a self-contained trilogy, anyway, it’s not bugging me too much.  I am going to continue writing in the universe, and Witchfinder, the book I’m posting for free on my blog every Friday is in that universe, though a different world.

And for the die hards that want more Shakespeare series — we might get to that in the fullness of time.  I have two more books planned in the series, but it would require a space of time to do it, like, six months, to get into the lingo.

OTOH since I’ll be finishing and bringing out the (Christopher) Marlowe Mysteries with Goldport Press, perhaps they can piggy back one on the other.

Anyway, as you see, I have a full schedule ahead for the coming year and if you feel a TERRIBLE need to know what I was talking about when I said “more on that later” — there’s this horrible habit I used to have as a young writer of hitting the chapter before last and just wanting to make it ALL right for the characters.  I think it takes loving characters very much for this to happen.  Dan used to read my books and go “Right, now take that outline you used for a last chapter, and write the hundred pages.”  I seem to love the characters for the space operas very much.  I did this with both Darkship Renegades and A Few Good Men, so today is devoted to finishing fixing that (rolls eyes.)  AND THEN I can move on with Noah’s boy.

This, ladies, gentlemen and dragons has been a relatively short and hopefully clear summation of the state of the Sarah.  Feel Free to ask about anything I didn’t mention!

Lizzy had not had the least intention of dancing with him. Indeed she did not. And yet she found herself accepting, she found herself stepping out onto the dance floor with him.

And all the while she was sure that her friend Charlotte, with whom she’d been talking about the strangers just moments earlier, was laughing at her behind her fan, doubtless amazingly diverted. Lizzy had just been telling her how the tall dark stranger looked far too proud and better pleased with himself than with his company. And now she was dancing with him. What had come over her?

Nothing good. She felt as though she were drunk, or as if she had been dusted with some of that magical powder that the old legends her mother prized said the good neighbors could throw upon the eyes of the unwary and make them see something quite different.

In fact, she was very sure she was dreaming or otherwise suffering from a confusion of the senses, because the man’s dancing was the most exquisite pleasure she’d ever experienced. As they joined the dance and twirled together through the figures of the sets, she found that his movements exactly anticipate hers, melted into hers, his mind seeming to know hers.

It went so well, in fact, that she realized they’d almost completed the whole set and they’d not said a word to each other. Worse, he was looking at her with an odd expression, as if he were hungry and she were the only source of his sustenance. And she, in turn, was looking into his eyes and realizing that sparkles shone within their grey depths.

How strange that was. How unusual. It was as molten metal had formed his eyes, and only some parts were polished, shining like flecks of silver caught in stone. How could he have eyes like that? Such eyes weren’t human!

She thought of him riding through the moonlight on a horse she could not convince herself was a normal, mortal horse, and she shivered.

The eyes turned to her, with sudden concern and the features that still looked far too proud showed a little unbending, something like an almost smile. “Are you cold, Miss Bennet? Is something amiss?”

And in this strange place her mind had gone, Lizzy had no proper reply for him, and could think of no accustomed words. She drew breath quickly and looked away from the eyes that almost had an hypnotic hold on her. “No, no,” she said. “Oh, it is nothing, and it means nothing, surely.” And realizing that her words too meant nothing, of at least nothing sane, she shook her head. “It just occurred to me,” she said. “That I have been remiss. One should have some talk when dancing. A very little would suffice.”

“Indeed?” he said, and sounded curious. “Is that the local custom? That one must talk while dancing?”

She flashed at him, a sting of anger, which she tried to tamp down. What did he mean the local custom? What did he mean by treating her as if she were a mere provincial? Oh, that she might be. She was, surely. After all, her father had refused to go to London with them, even for the sake of giving Jane a proper season, much less to give Lizzy one. And Jane, with her beauty, would certainly have taken the town by storm, and there was no level of nobility to which she could not aspire. As for Lizzy, well! As her mama was wont to say, Lizzy was well enough, too.

But it was not to be. Her father had no interest in the society that had censored him for marrying a woman so far beneath himself, with connections in trade. It was possible – Lizzy thought – that he would have forgotten the sting of their spite had his marriage turned out to be blissfully happy. But mama… well, mama was mama, and no one could pretend that papa still reveled in his unconventional choice. And therefore they were at Longborne to stay. And therefore the girls might be provincial enough.

However, it neither became Mr. Darcy, with his mannered air, his polished appearance to remind her that she was beneath himself, nor was it any part of good breeding to act as though you were above your company. A waspish sting was in her voice as she asked, “I believe, sir, that it is custom, as you put it, everywhere.”

She expected offense, at least in reaction to her offense. Instead, she met with more curiosity – truly if he was such a mocker, ready to–

“But of what does one talk?” he asked.

Lizzy was startled by the question, by the genuine interest in the eyes. What did he wish for? Something in his eyes spoke genuine interest, but he could not have a genuine interest in his witless questions, could he? What on Earth could he mean by it?

And then she thought he was flirting with her. Which was just the sort of amusement that she had always heard wealthy London gentlemen engaged in with women from the country, who had no fortune and no connections. She looked away from him, “You could comment on the size of the room. I could say something about the number of couples.”

He frowned, his forehead creasing. “Why?” he asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Why should one have such a conversation, when one is not imparting any new knowledge to the other?”

“Because…. because…” she said, floundering and wondering if there was anything wrong with the gentleman’s head. “Because it is what one does. One cannot dance silently.”

He tilted his head a little. The oddest scent came from him, she realized, even as she also realized that the gentleman had the most unearthly regular profile she’d ever seen, and most exquisitely shaped lips she’d ever noticed on a male face. “Well, then,” he said, “Let’s speak of you.”

At that moment the figures of the dance separated them, and it was a while before they joined them again. Which was just as well, because Lizzy, her face burning, had time to calm down and to chide herself for – she was sure – staring at him, and for wondering what the gentleman was about. She was sure her mother would say that Lizzy had charmed him, and that now she only needed to secure him.

Lizzy could – all too easily – picture her mother fanning herself and swooning at the prospect of a son in law of such wealth. But Lizzy knew better. Jane charmed men. Lizzy was not known for it.

When the dance joined them again, she could say, with perfect composure. “Sir, I do not know what you mean.”

“What is your name?” he asked. “Pray, your full name.”

“Sir!”

“Surely I’m not asking anything improper?”

She didn’t suppose so, but it was the tone in which he asked it that discomposed her so terribly. He asked as if he really cared, as if this were far more than social chatter. Well, then, Lizzy would put him by truly giving him her full name. The name that made most people shy away from further acquaintance with her because it bespoke a family too eccentric to be easily endured. “Very well,” she said. “My name is Elizabeth Titania Bennet. And yours, sir?”

This was lightly said, but it had the effect it always had, of making the man draw in breath as if he’d been punched in the solar plexus. It took him a moment to recover it. “Tita– Titania?”

“Indeed, sir,” she said, her eyes flashing challenge. “Do you object?”

“How can I object to your being named after a queen of ethereal beauty?” he asked. And she wished she could call him a liar, for she could see how discomfited he was.

“Ah,” she said, instead and wished her voice didn’t crackle with irony. “I see you read Shakespeare!”

“Shake– Oh, the bard. I’m not very well acquainted with him. Our circles rarely cross. But I know Marlowe passably well. He often comes to the grand courts.”

And now it was her turn to look – she was sure – confused. And perhaps that was his entire intent.

“Not that,” he added hastily, as if he thought he’d alarmed her. “Mister Marlowe is a part of my close circle. But we were speaking of you. How came you by such a beautiful name?”

She had to clear her throat – bewildered as she was by their conversation – before she could answer, and when she answered her voice was less than steady. “It was the name of an ancestress of my mother’s. And since then the name has been in our family. My grandmother was given it as a given name, but she was the last one. My parents thought it might be best to give it to me as a middle name.”

“A… a wise choice,” he said. “Oh, another set is starting. Would you dance with me again?”

She wanted to refuse. She should have refused. But the lateness of the hour, or something, made it impossible for her to answer in the negative.

“Oh, Mr. Bennet. Our girls were so admired,” Mrs. Bennet said, as she came into the house, tired and chattering. “There was nothing to it. At least Lizzy and Jane, for Mr. Bingley danced twice with Jane and–”

“Twice, did he?” Mr. Bennet said, with a doubtful, smiling look. “I see. Should I expect a visit from the gentleman?”

“Oh, no, papa,” Jane said, and blushed prettily. “At least… at least not … I’m sure he was just being civil.”

Mrs. Bennet cackled, an habit that her loving spouse had often and often told her was unsuitable, but of which she couldn’t seem to break herself. “Ah!” she said. “If you think that’s marvelous, you should know that Mr. Darcy danced with our Lizzy three times.”

“Three times?” Mr. Bennet’s eyebrows shot up, because surely that was making her the talk of Merryton. “Three times, Lizzy?”

Lizzy shrugged. “There were fewer men than women,” she said, tersely. “He meant nothing by it.”

“Oh, did he not?” Mrs. Bennet said. “And after the dances, he tried to convince her to go with him to the terrace.”

“He just said he wished to talk, Mama, do not–”

Mr. Bennet’s mouth pursed. “Should I expect a visit from this Mr. Darcy Lizzy?”

“I don’t think so,” Lizzy said. Or at least not in that way. You see, he is engaged, and his fiancé is a very fine lady.”

“Engaged is he? And his fiancé was present? This sounds like very strange behavior, Lizzy. I don’t say it lightly, but your Mr. Darcy sounds like a loose fish.”

Since Lizzy was inclined to agree, she didn’t protest. She just wished she knew what had compelled her to dance with him three times. Now she’d be a nine days wonder in the town, till something else eclipsed it.

But eventually something else would eclipse it. And she determined, in her heart, not to see Mr. Darcy again and certainly never to dance with him again.

*This is chapter ten of witchfinder, the Fantasy novel I’m posting here for free, one chapter every Friday.  I’ve been posting director’s commentary at the end of chapters, but I think it detracts from the experience, so I’ll do that on Sunday, instead, for the previous chapter.  If your conscience troubles you getting something for free, feel free to hit the donate button on the right side.  Anyone donating more than $6 will get a non-drm electronic copy of Witchfinder in its final version, when it’s published.  And, oh, yeah, the cover sucks, but I haven’t had time for a new one.

Oh, this is in pre-earc format, meaning you’ll find the occasional spelling mistake and sentence that makes no sense.  It’s not exactly first draft, but it’s not at the level I’d send to a publisher, yet.*

For first chapter, look here

For ninth chapter, look here

A Mother’s Heart

They were keeping secrets again.  The Dowager Duchess knew this, though she couldn’t tell about what exactly.

For the two days of her son’s illness – of his lying beneath healing spells, swaddled in blankets and force fed broth – she’d wondered how it had come to this.  And she’d wondered what Gabriel knew that she didn’t know.

Something it was, that she could be sure of.  For one, Gabriel’s face was always easy for her to read.  Had to be, as much as he resembled her own son.  The reasons for that, though she’d tried to forget them, couldn’t but confuse her feelings towards the boy.  She both loved him, almost like her own son, and she hated him as a reminder of a dark time in her own childhood and of the misadventure that had almost lost her to the world of humans.

It had been the same since the moment her husband had brought Gabriel in, and the truth was that if Gabriel hadn’t been a year older than Seraphim, and a few months older than their marriage, the dowager would have insisted on claiming him as a son and brazening the world and the ton with some excuse about one of a pair of twins stolen by magical beings.  But Gabriel was the elder, his age could be found by magical means not too difficult to employ, and there was no way to make that lie convincing.  Not when at the time of Gabriel’s birth the, then, Lady Barbara Hartwit had been dancing the night away at various soires and balls, slim as sylph and still unmarried.

Also, they couldn’t risk Gabriel inheriting.  Not with the blood in him.  Most other people would not have been sure about allowing him into the house.  She remembered her husband asking her “Are you sure Barbara?  We don’t know, after all, how he will turn out.  There are some who say–”

But all she’d done was nod, because he’d told her what he’d taken the boy from, and what fate waited him if his mother’s people got their hands on him, and Gabriel looked so much like Seraphim even then, that Barbara could not imagine consigning the child to death, or worse.  So she’d taken him into the house, and raised him as a fosterling, letting everyone know he was her husband’s son and that some provision would be made for him in the fullness of time.

They’d been more than ready to make provision, too, despite their straightened circumstances.  They’d sent him to Cambridge with Seraphim, and were ready to stand him his beginning in a small magic business, or, perhaps, in law.  Even the church, if he had a bend for it, though considering the magical trouble the boy got into, that seemed like a forlorn hope.

But now, standing in her room, pacing, Lady Barbara realized that had been the first sign of trouble. Gabriel had been sent down from Cambridge, for an offense that her husband would not speak about, that Seraphim claimed to be sworn not to disclose, and that Gabriel himself turned pale but refused to speak of it.

Something had happened there.  For a time, the Duchess had nurtured suspicions, but not if Gabriel was in a fair way to being engaged.

The problem was that she didn’t quite believe he was in a fair way to being engaged.  Not to Miss Felix, at any rate.  She didn’t know who the woman was, but she would bet she was not who she’d said.  For one, the Duchess could feel Miss Felix’s magic quite well.  And it was not the kind of trifling magic that would fall to the lot of an illegitimate daughter or the daughter of a poor family.  A woman who brought that kind of magic with her could aspire to the highest families in the kingdom.  She would not be considering Gabriel, such as Gabriel’s position and expectations appeared to be, and she would not be meeting with him on the sly.

No.  The girl was something to do with Seraphim.  And Gabriel was hiding what he knew of it, and what he knew of Seraphim’s injuries, too.  And it was no use at all denying it.  She’d marked how Gabriel stinted sleep to stay by Seraphim’s side and listen for any stray word, any casually dropped hint that might have told the dowager more than they wished her to know.

She took a deep breath.  She was afraid for the boys.  This time, whatever trouble they’d managed was far more severe than the forcing house.

A scratch at the door called her attention.  It was the sort of gentle scratching that she’d taught her daughter to employ, instead of the far more brash knocking.  “Come in,” she called.

Caroline came in.  She looked like a younger replica of her mother, her features small and well place in her oval face. Only her eyes were the same as her brothers’, the large, intensely green eyes of the Ainslings.  Right at the moment, they were wide open, and her skin, which tended towards a more golden color than that of the boys, had gone pale.  The dark hair which she wore in demure braids had become lose and she was clutching the skirts of her white muslin dress in great handfuls, probably as a result of having run up the stairs, “Mama,” she said, without preamble.  “There was someone…”  She swallowed hard.  “There is someone killed in the garden.”

The Duchess clutched at her skirt, in an involuntary reaction, “There’s been an accident?” she asked, and then as it occurred to her that the hour being late, her fifteen year old daughter, barely out of the nursery, and certainly not out of the school room, should not be up.  “And pray tell, where were you?  And why are you not abed this late at night?”

But Caroline only looked at her as though the dowager had taken leave of her senses.  “I was looking for Michael,” she said, as though that were of little or no importance.  “But Mama, there was a death.  Seraphim killed someone.”

“Impossible!  Seraphim is in no state to–”

“Pray, listen, Mama.  Just listen.”  The girl was far too high spirited, and now she would carry her point in the face of her mother’s disapproval.  “I went out to the garden, to look for Michael, because he is not in his room, and I thought he might be in his workshop.  You know how he can get absorbed in his magical machines, and forget the hour.  He didn’t come for dinner, either, so I thought I’d go and drag him indoors to eat and go to bed.”  She paused.

The dowager nodded.  Her daughter’s attachment to her twin was well known, though why she should fancy herself as though the boy’s mother, Barbara Ainsling would never understand.

“He was not in the workshop,” Caroline said.  “And I thought perhaps he’d come in and was in the library doing some research.  So, I came in through the side servant entrance, and that’s when I heard the footmen going out there.  They went by me in the second floor landing, and have no fear, Mama, they never saw me, for I knit myself with the wall, but they were talking, and they said his Grace had sent out a killing bolt.  That they’d felt it.  And it was no use at all Mr. Penn saying it had been in self-defense, because how could it be, when it must have sought out the poor bas– the poor victim at the bottom of the garden, as the cook had seen it fly, true and fiery all the way there.   It had to be a targeted murder, and his Grace probably had done it while out of his mind with fever and knowing no more what he was about than he’d known in his ramblings these last two days.”

“And you came to tell me of what you heard?” the Duchess asked.

Caroline looked faintly shocked at the idea, “Oh, no, Mama.  Nothing so cowhearted.  I followed them, of course, in the dark.  No, Mama, don’t scold, I promise they did not see me.”

At any other time, the Duchess would have scolded the hoydenish behavior, but now she could only say, “And then?”

“What do you think?  They got a man from the bottom of the garden.  A very well dressed man, Mama.”

“Alive?” the Lady Barbara asked, on a sudden impulse of hope.

“Oh, no, Mama, very dead.”  Caroline pulled back her hair, which had loosened completely from her braid and fallen in front of her eyes.  “And I’m sure it was done with a killing bolt, Mama.  It had that feel.”  For the first time fear superseded excitement and she added, “Only…  Mama, Seraphim can’t have known what he was doing.  They can’t hold him responsible, can they?”

Only the Duchess wasn’t sure that her son wasn’t responsible.  There was the something he and Gabriel were holding secret.  But the time for hesitating was over, “I don’t know,” she told Caroline.  “But I intend to find out.  You go to your bed.  You did well in telling me, but not well in wandering about the house at this hour.  Go to your room and to your bed, and leave me to find out what happened.  I’m sure your brother wouldn’t do such a thing unless there were a legally defensible reason for his actions.”  At least she very much hoped so.  As was, a problem of this magnitude, legal or not, might be the end of all his chances with Honoria, particularly on top of the shamefully delayed engagement announcement.  The unworthy thought that perhaps this was planned crossed her mind.  But no.  Why would the boy insist on the engagement, then seek to escape it by dangerous means?

She kissed Caroline’s forehead and said, “Go to bed now, child.”

The Duchess was out of her room and halfway down the hallway to Seraphim’s, before she heard her daughter’s voice at her back, “But Mama!  I still have not found Michael!”